4 ms·
It would not have been the same since the UK has a similar amount of oil and 12x the number of people. Proportionately it was far less significant.
by laurencerowe 7y ago
It would not have been the same since the UK has a similar amount of oil and 12x the number of people. Proportionately it was far less significant.
- smcl 7y agoI'm fully aware of that, however currently as a population we have nearly nothing to show for decades of oil extraction other than pockets of extremely concentrated wealth. If we make a wild assumption that we did exactly the same with our reserves and somehow contrived to create exactly the same sovereign wealth fund, that'd work out to around £13,000 per person. That's not enough to make everyone a millionaire, but it's much greater than the £0 we put aside the way we did it. Of course this is speculation, featuring ifs/buts and using numbers plucked from our neighbour across the North Sea ... however it's pretty plain to see that we screwed this opportunity up.